Despite the level of public interest in the case, it was three weeks before the Hungarian public was able to see Attila speak for himself, because that was how long it took for Bérdi and Kriminális host László Juszt to agree to the terms of Attila’s first television interview. Juszt had been holding out to do the show live from Attila’s jail cell while he and Attila sipped whiskey, but eventually he consented to taping the interview in Bérdi’s office (where Attila would appear without handcuffs) and merely presenting the robber with a bottle of whiskey that would remain unopened.
The special edition of Kriminális aired in prime time on Wednesday, February 10, at the end of a news cycle that, even by Hungarian standards, was remarkable. The previous Tuesday one of the country’s most dangerous criminals, György Döcher, was assassinated while having coffee at a downtown café. The next day preliminary disciplinary proceedings were launched against the prison official who had permitted Döcher to step away from his jail cell for an afternoon refreshment.
Then on Monday Márta Tocsik, the lawyer who had presided over the Scandal of the Century, was found not guilty on all charges. And earlier in the day of Juszt’s Whiskey Robber interview, the police launched a massive investigation into the financial improprieties of Gábor Princz, one of the best-known and wealthiest Hungarians, who had famously run Hungary’s largest bank chain, Postabank, into the ground and stuck the Hungarian government with a 152-billion-forint ($652 million) bailout bill while he fled to Vienna.
But that night one-third of the country tuned in for Juszt’s Barbara Walters–style sit-down with the Whiskey Robber. After the Kriminális theme, Juszt appeared at his podium in the newsroom and introduced the night’s show by calling Attila’s story a “serial fairy tale.” Then he rolled the tape of his interview from earlier that day at the jail.
The cameras followed the beefy Juszt, dressed in an olive double-breasted suit and yellow designer tie, into Bérdi’s dowdy, dark office, where the Whiskey Robber was leaning against an empty bookshelf as if waiting on a librarian to return with his periodical. Wearing a peach-colored button-down and three-day-old stubble, Attila looked relaxed and rested; his short dark hair was combed and slightly wet from a recent shower. Juszt, grinning like a politician, handed him a bottle of Macallan whiskey, “just to be stylish. Unfortunately, we cannot drink it together.”
Reaching out for the bottle, Attila laughed, showing his deep cheek dimples. Köszönöm szépen, he said. Thank you very much. He was more handsome and telegenic than even Juszt could have hoped.
The two men sat down in Bérdi’s office. “I’m glad to finally meet you,” Juszt said, beginning the interview. “We’ve worked together for so many years.”
Attila spoke briefly of a hopeless childhood in Romania, characterizing his escape into Hungary as a second chance, a shot at a better life that never materialized despite his best legal efforts. “I did everything,” Attila said of his job history. “I don’t have a skill for anything, but I did everything.” He was humble and reflective, and though his background said one thing, he neither looked nor sounded anything like a former animal-pelt smuggler who’d never finished high school and had just landed in the slammer.
Twice during the half-hour interview, Juszt suggested that Attila’s style was like Robin Hood, but Attila wouldn’t accept the comparison. “I’m a criminal,” Attila said. “But the goal was not to get money at all costs. There were many cases where I was in a situation where I could have shot somebody or been shot, but the most important thing was that there would be no violence, no blood. If the situation got too hot, I just took off…. But I really want to emphasize that I’m very sorry. I didn’t want to, but I did point my gun at some people. I may not have caused physical injury, but there was surely a psychological reaction, and I am apologizing to them now.”
Attila hit every note perfectly without even sounding as if he was trying. He sidestepped the folk-hero comparison as ably as he painted his case in political terms. Asked by Juszt what type of prison sentence he expected, Attila said, “I know about [Márta] Tocsik, for example. The two cases have nothing to do with each other. But she took money from the state. I took money from the state. It’s not my place to judge, but she was released. I know I will not be released. I’m expecting ten or eleven years.”
By the end of the interview, Attila’s sincerity and poise had surrounded him with a sheen of moral clarity. By comparison, his interviewer appeared fawning and awkward. Noting that the newspapers had previously reported that Attila had been to see his play, the Kriminális Cabaret, Juszt asked what Attila thought of the production. “I don’t want to be too personal about it,” Attila said, “but I think if someone is a reporter, he should be a reporter. For instance, I am a bank robber, so I don’t try to be a gravedigger, though, actually, I used to be a gravedigger. But I don’t try to be Tolstoy. It was good, but I thought it was too slow.”
To end the program, Juszt turned to the camera, saying simply, “He was the Whiskey Robber.”
Not surprisingly, the Kriminális interview was a public relations hat trick for Attila. He came off as handsome, intelligent, articulate, courageous, self-effacing, and even penitent—not exactly qualities Hungarians associated with someone sitting in jail or, for that matter, elected office. Yet despite all of his star qualities, Attila also appeared unmistakably like so many of his countrymen—another guy who had struggled to make a life for himself in an unfair system. As unlikely as it was, the man behind the legend of the Whiskey Robber actually seemed to live up to the myth.
Budapest’s bars and coffeehouses buzzed with tributes to Hungary’s “modern-day Sándor Rózsa,” the eighteenth-century Hungarian Robin Hood. Gangsta Zoli, moved by the audacity of his occasional drinking companion, began writing a new single that would soon climb the charts, “The Whiskey Robber Is the King.” Even some of the victims of Attila’s robberies came to his defense. “It’s a shame we were hit at the beginning,” one of the tellers from an early post office robbery told Mai Nap, “because we didn’t get the flowers.”
For the next month Attila lived out a fantasy. After what felt like a lifetime forcing himself not to talk—first under Ceau
escu in Romania and then as a hunted criminal in Hungary—he was free to say anything he wanted. And for the first time in his life, everyone wanted to hear what he had to say. Almost every day he received, and accepted, a media request. He sat down for interviews in room 309 of the jail’s adjacent administration building with all three of Hungary’s major television networks and every newspaper. Back in his cell, he yapped so incessantly that his cellmate, Killer, who signed his letters to his wife in blood, finally threatened to stab Attila if he didn’t shut up (which worked).
Because Attila was feeling so chatty and still had no lawyer, Bérdi seized the opportunity to ask if he would agree to speak with a forensic psychologist as part of the investigation. Attila not only obliged, he filled up the doctor’s notebook. At the end of one several-page-long answer in which Attila described to the shrink his hockey career, his childhood, and his odd job history, the psychologist wrote in the margin of her notes: “Only asked about physical injuries!”
Gabi, on the other hand, who had had no contact with Attila since the Sz
cs lineup, was a far more reticent resident of the jail. There were still two robberies of the thirteen he had committed that he was maintaining he didn’t remember, even when investigators prompted him with such details as a loaf of bread in the safe and a cigar bomb on the counter. And after the publication of Gabi’s interview with the daily newspaper Népszabadság, his lawyer, Péter Bárándy, the president of the prestigious Budapest Chamber of Lawyers and the country’s future justice minister, advised his client against talking to the media ever again. Perhaps it was Gabi’s description of life on the run that prompted his lawyer’s concern: “It was so exciting, seeing the huge-lettered headlines on the front pages about the Whiskey Robber,” Gabi told Népszabadság. “And I’m sitting there with the front-page guy. We’re friends! We’re partners! And I know things that any cop would give his arm for!”
In March, when the media’s golden glare began to recede, Attila got a good look at his new, lonely reality. He was surrounded by metal bars, guards, investigators, and boxes of chocolate and love letters sent by anonymous admirers. But none of his friends or hockey teammates had come to visit. He assumed that his former compatriots were tired of being interrogated about him, especially since he hadn’t been such a good friend the past couple of years. The last time he’d seen Éva, a few weeks before his arrest, he’d stomped out of her house after screaming about the money she owed him. And as for Bubu, it was unlikely Attila could have reached him even if he had tried: his old billiards companion was now an investor in a group of brothels, a career move that had made him so paranoid that he had changed his phone number and traveled around town only alongside his six feet six Székely business partner, both of them packing loaded pistols under their leather jackets.
The only two people from Attila’s past life who remained in his present one were Zsuzsa, the maternal grocery clerk who thought of Attila as the son she never had; and a blond, leggy eighteen-year-old national figure-skating competitor named Virág who’d had a crush on Attila ever since he played hockey with her brother for a season at FTC. Each of them arrived once a week, bearing a bag full of the items Attila requested: a half kilo of crispy, all-meat Kaiser bacon (presliced); two packages of smoked broiled chicken legs; one poppy seed roll and one walnut roll (both from a decent confectionery and not a supermarket so they wouldn’t dry out); two or three pieces of vacuum-packed smoked salmon; two pieces of halva; and, most important, whiskey—as much of it as they could sneak in, which turned out to be easiest to do in emptied-out soda bottles.
There was no official visitation room, so the jail’s visitors met their loved ones in the same office in which they were interrogated, room 309, the little rectangular chamber next to Bérdi’s office. Just as for press sessions, Attila was freed of his handcuffs so he could sit comfortably in the old green armchair near the door. Often the guards left him alone and stood outside during his visit, which they usually allowed to slide past the thirty-minute limit. Only once did Attila emerge from a visit (with Zsuzsa) so smashed that they had to help carry his leftover food and “soda” back to his cell.
Attila was aware that he was getting special privileges. He was allowed more than one shower a day and could leave his light on as late as he wanted. Colonel Bérdi had even agreed to give him an old typewriter for his cell so that he could begin writing his life story. But as the days wore on and Attila continued to be questioned about the Heltai Square shoot-out while not being told anything about when or how his sentence would be handed down, he grew wary of his captors’ goodwill.
One day when the lead investigator Valter Fülöp called Attila upstairs to ask him some more questions, Attila decided to ask one himself: he wanted to know if he could talk with Colonel Bérdi about his seemingly inert case. After all, he’d confessed to everything, yet still hadn’t even been formally charged, much less sentenced. Attila wanted to know what the holdup was. But Valter dismissed Attila’s concerns, saying, “There’s no problem. Everything will be cleared up in court.”
Attila was stunned. There was only one reason he could think of that his case would end up in court, and that was if the government planned to charge him with a crime other than those to which he’d confessed.
Standing in the hallway outside the interrogation room, Attila nearly lost it. He’d done everything the police had asked and more. Didn’t even have a lawyer to run interference. Valter let Attila rant until he was finished. Then the guards took him back downstairs.
A few days later Attila got a message to Valter through the guards that he wanted to see his ex-girlfriend Éva. Valter had the number; he’d already questioned Éva several times. Valter made the call, and a week later Éva nervously arrived at the jail and was led up to room 309.
She got to the room first and tried to be patient while she waited for the guards to get Attila. She was ready to forget the fight she and Attila had had the last time they were together, but the one thing she couldn’t help feeling angry about was just how much Attila had kept hidden from her even on that day in Csíkszereda at his grandmother’s grave. She wasn’t sure how she would feel when she saw him, nor what he would want from her now that he was a big celebrity in a load of trouble.
When Attila arrived, Éva was shaken by his downcast, alcohol-reddened face. He looked a lot worse than he had during his Kriminális interview. She could tell he was hurting, and when the guard unlocked his cuffs, she reflexively grabbed his strong, familiar hands. Their conversation was stilted at first, both because of their recent fight (for which they each apologized) and because of the guard in the room. After a few minutes, though, he left them alone, and as soon as the door closed, Attila told Éva the one thing she wished he’d been able to say to her years ago: “I need help.” He told her he knew the Szcs brothers had been facing attempted murder charges for the shooting following the robbery of the OTP Bank at Heltai Square on March 11, 1998. But, Attila told Éva, even though he had repeatedly sworn to investigators that the shots he fired that day were only warning shots—in hopes of warding off his pursuers—Attila was afraid the police didn’t believe him.
“I need you to believe me,” Attila said.
“I do,” Éva told him.
She said he needed to get a lawyer, immediately. She would take care of everything.
A few weeks later Attila was summoned from his cell and taken upstairs to Colonel Bérdi’s office. He walked into the room to find not an attorney but the former robbery chief, Lajos Varjú, sitting on the couch.
Lajos had received a call the previous week from Judit P. Gál, the lanky enterprising reporter for Mai Nap who had done the bulk of the paper’s coverage on the Whiskey Robber case. She wanted to know if Lajos would be interested in going to see Attila with her so that she could write a story about their meeting for the paper. Initially, Lajos was reluctant. He still wasn’t over his bitterness about his treatment by police brass, and no other case symbolized his frustration like this one. Directly or indirectly, the Whiskey Robber had brought about the loss of his job, his reputation, and, most recently, his marriage. But ultimately he was too curious to say no.
Lajos could see right away that Attila wasn’t faring well in captivity. His hair was greasy and matted down on his head, he had a scruffy Fu Manchu mustache, and his chest and arms were bulging unnaturally out of his shirt like a steroid-filled bodybuilder. But he still had that disarming grin. When Attila recognized who was waiting for him, his face brightened and he reached out his hand to his longtime foe. Lajos shook it and his own head. Life was a pisser.
“You were the only true professional at the police,” Attila told Lajos, then added before Lajos could answer, “but I was always one step ahead of you.”
Lajos laughed, hoping he wasn’t going to regret having come. As he listened to Attila talk, Lajos noticed two things about his old nemesis. First, he was stinking drunk, and second—which he figured flowed from the first—he sounded dangerously wistful about the past.
“Remember the time I sent you a note?” Attila asked as the Mai Nap reporter scribbled notes and a photographer snapped pictures.
“Yes,” Lajos said, forcing a smile. “I nearly blew up inside.”
After about twenty minutes, there was little left to say. Lajos took some satisfaction in seeing that Attila wasn’t much different from what he’d expected. Even though they had just met, he felt that he had a pretty good bead on Attila. He was a simple guy with a decent heart and a screwed-up life who made some terrible choices. He had also spent his hockey career at the rink less than a mile from the Újpest apartment where Lajos had lived until last year. Lajos could be extremely annoyed by Attila, but he couldn’t hate him. He did, however, want to ask him something. As Lajos got up to leave, he saw that no one else was paying attention and he leaned in toward Attila.
“Have you already figured out how to get out of here?” Lajos asked.
“Persze,” Attila said. Of course.